Spring 2008

LOCAL GROWERS COMPETE IN COLLEGE CAFETERIAS It used to be a source of frustration in small towns in western and central Massachusetts that the contract for school milk would go to out-of-town dairies because the cost was lower. But over the past five years, Dining Services at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst (where I teach) has(...)

Here’s one report card that Massachusetts might want to hide: Governing magazine and the Pew Center on the States gave the state a “C” in their Grading the States report, released in early March. As the map below indicates, only New Hampshire and Rhode Island got lower grades for how well their state governments are(...)

walk into a bookstore almost anywhere in America and you’ll find a shelf full of thin paperback books with distinctive sepia-toned covers. Light on text, heavy on photos, numbingly similar in format and content, they’re volumes in Arcadia Publishing’s Images of America series of local history books. Since 1994, Arcadia has put out more than(...)

Illustration by Nick Galifianakis here’s what adam gaffin finds frustrating. He’s in his car, heading for a meeting in Framingham, where he works in tech publishing. He’s got the radio tuned to WBZ. And news is breaking — a fire, a shooting, a derailment on the MBTA, whatever. What he’d like to do is park(...)

in 2007, massachusetts Insurance Commissioner Nonnie S. Burnes announced the end of the auto insurance regulatory regime that had been in place for decades. Burnes proclaimed that the time had come for the state’s “fix-and-establish” method of auto insurance regulation to be replaced by “managed competition.” And she predicted consumers would see greater choice and(...)

UPDATE: The Bay State’s unemployment rate over the 2009 calendar year was 8.4 percent, far above the 4.5 percent that we found worrying in 2007. See the map below for 2009 town-by-town figures, or get the 2007 and 2009 data as an Excel spreadsheet or PDF. The highest unemployment rates in 2009 were in Provincetown(...)

government often uses task forces and special commissions in a somewhat dubious fashion — either as a graveyard for an initiative by burying it in endless analysis, or as a rubber stamp for the initiative by stacking the commission with allies who will provide ostensibly objective third-party support. So it was with some initial skepticism(...)

Sometimes you get lucky. I bumped into photographer Bill Brett walking through Downtown Crossing in January. He told me about his latest book project, which led to an interesting conversation with him about Boston and the chance to run a number of his new photos, including the cover shot of Morgan Freeman. Having a movie(...)

CASINO PLAN IGNORES THE COSTS OF ADDICTION It was a breath of fresh media air to read Phil Primack’s article “Playing the Numbers” (CW, Winter ’08), which provides evidence that the Patrick administration did not do its homework when projecting casino benefits in terms of jobs and revenue. Unfortunately, they also did not do their(...)

every era has its touchstone photograph. The Marines hoisting the American flag on Iwo Jima telegraphs the hard-fought triumphs of World War II. The New York City firemen raising the Stars and Stripes over the rubble at Ground Zero after 9/11 captures the resilience of a besieged city. The signature image of Boston’s busing crisis(...)